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Weekly Tech Tips 15 November 2020

 Dear Friends,


I know what you’re thinking, it’s almost Christmas, what’s Scott gonna give me for Christmas? Well don’t you worry about it. I’ve been digging up some special treasures for you all. I continue to craft our Google Certified Educator prep courses and am aiming to have those ready for you just as soon as we return from the holidays. As Google’s Apps continue to change before our eyes I will endeavor to keep you apprised of any critical information that you may need. For now, Google has been making it pretty clear that Trash has changed with a notification every time you open Drive that files will be automatically deleted after 30 days, so you might want to check what’s in the trash. Also, free storage for photos is going away. I guess that couldn’t realistically last forever. Still not seeing Smart Fill on Sheets. Lemme know if you see it pop up. Really looking forward to that.


Weekly Tech Tips / Webinars / Online Courses / Articles of Interest


I attended a CK-12 Webinar on Friday morning and I wanted to share what I learned with you. I have talked about CK-12 at least once before. It is a forever-free online resource library and learning management system. They can better tell you than I about their mission. This is a fun little website that you scroll through: https://www.ck12info.org/mission/


There is a Digital Teacher’s Assistant and an AI Tutor. There is Multiple Language Support (I checked, Korean is there) and you can change font size, color, other settings for enhanced accessibility. They are partnered with Google so integration with Google Classroom is seamless.

The practice questions are Adaptive with Reports / Analytics / Recommendations for each student

and Histograms of time spent / Track engagement for teacher diagnostics.

Here is a one-page brochure that lays it out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BdyLTmPbxkuLyozcnTwMSrq1yo_yitEk/view?usp=sharing

This is the Webinar I attended

https://youtu.be/MRZiFFDwmz8

And here are many other Webinars recorded from CK-12

http://www.ck12.org/webinars

Finally here is a free self-paced course to become certified on their platform.

CK-12 Certification

When I see folks like these doing things like this it warms my heart and restores my faith in the goodness God put in the world. These are high-quality, forever-free teaching resources. Over 10,000 free customizable STEM resources are available. Much of the content is math and science, but there are also plenty of social studies and spelling materials. As the name of the foundation indicates, there are resources for all ages K - 12. What a fantastic group of people.


A couple of articles that caught my eye this week that I thought I’d share just in case you find yourself with some extra reading time on your hands.


School Wasn’t so Great Before COVID Either 

by Erika Christakis from The Atlantic

She talks about a year round summer camp and no standardized tests this year.


The best way to improve schools? Invest in teachers.

by Kelsie Piper at Vox.com

This article summarizes the paper

How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently?:

A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric

which is about 50 pp. so she whittles that down to the important bits for us.


Happy Holidays! And have a great week!

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